


The Freak Show

by merryghoul



Category: Safe From Harm - Massive Attack (Song)
Genre: 1990s, Animal Abuse, Animal Death, Chases, Drug Dealing, Gen, London, mention of a creepy-looking kid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 06:47:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14731970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merryghoul/pseuds/merryghoul
Summary: It’s a struggle to even make it up the stairs there.





	The Freak Show

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Deepdarkwaters](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/gifts).



> Deepdarkwaters, you said it was okay to follow the music video of the song if there was one, so this is very close to the music video of “Safe From Harm.”

There was a man on the twentieth floor of Chiron Tower, one of the tower blocks in the Woodstar Estate. Some people believed he actually was a vampire. What was concretely known was he _believed_ he was a vampire. He would have liked to go for human blood, but obtaining human blood, obviously, was hard for a civilian. And murder would have landed him in Belmarsh, the prison that just opened up in Thamesmead. He installed pigeon spikes on his balcony, covered in wads of white bread. When a pigeon was stupid enough to go for the bread and impale itself on the spikes, the man would carefully remove the pigeon from the spikes with gardening gloves. Then the man would cut a gash in the dead pigeon’s neck, drink from the gash, and throw the pigeon down to the ground.

The lights on the tallest points of Chiron Tower shone brightly on the concrete below, as if they were spotlights scanning for the next performer to perform, just like the man on the twentieth floor. No wonder why Chiron Tower was called the “Freak Show.”

No wonder Jacqueline was always on guard walking every night up to her apartment in the tower block. She knew the pigeon she passed by was the prey of that peculiar man that lived on the twentieth floor of the Freak Show.

Jaqueline looked up. Someone in a sweatshirt on the second floor was looking at her. The sweatshirt had some sort of printed pattern on it, but Jacqueline couldn’t make out the design. The window was halfway open for some reason, even though it was chilly outside. Or was that person looking at Jacqueline? Any way, that was the sign that Jacqueline needed to get by the railing that ran alongside the Freak Show and get inside.

Two men in jackets came out of the entrance of the Freak Show. One of them had some records in his hand. One of the labels had a big “TRAX RECORDS” on the label. Jacqueline had never seen these men before. Jacqueline’s guess was that they worked with the Freak Show’s weekend pirate radio station, Your Love Radio. Your Love Radio started five years earlier in the Freak Show. They wanted a license, to operate legally, but they were denied. They didn’t know why they were rejected for a license. They could’ve sworn they had a fanbase that was as big as Kiss Radio, who had recently gotten a radio license. And yet Jacqueline didn’t trust the men to do something bad to her. She clenched her jacket, ready to fight off the men if they grabbed her. (The men didn’t grab her.)

On the ground floor of Chiron Tower was a flat that belonged to a group of a drug dealers. Their flat was close to the Freak Show’s elevators. Usually the door would be shut to the drug dealers’ flat. Jacqueline would take the one of the elevators to her apartment on the sixteenth floor. But one of the elevators was closed for several days now. It was typical of the elevator repair people to drag their feet to fix the elevator in the Freak Show. The other was functioning. But tonight a couple of the drug dealers were by their door, and one of them, the one with the brown hair—Jacqueline believed his name was Bob—was blocking the only functioning elevator, probably for some drug deal inside the Freak Show. The other, a man with sunglasses—Jacqueline thought this man’s name was David—had a black bag open with something in it, something mercifully Jacqueline couldn’t see. The men saw her; Bob blocked the other elevator. “Not tonight, love,” he tutted in his Bristolian accent.

Jacqueline ran into the Freak Show’s stairwell. She knew Bob and David were coming after her, and she wouldn’t be safe until she was in her flat. Whatever was in that bag must’ve been very important to Bob and David.

When Bob and David heard Jacqueline run up the stairs, David put the bag back in the apartment. Bob opened the elevator and held it open for David. They went directly to the top floor of the Freak Show. David stepped out and walked to the stairwell, where he looked down at Jacqueline, watching her climb up the stairs. Nearby this part of the stairwell was a piece of glass shattered by a bullet. Sometimes David would look through the glass while taking a break from looking down the stairwell.

Jacqueline knew David was talking the elevator to observe her. And she knew that, somewhere on her journey up to her flat, Bob might try to attack her. Bob had a tendency to be unpredictable. To counter their threats, Jacqueline grabbed the railing of the stairs, walking as fast as she could. She started singing, at the top of her lungs, about the midnight rockers, the city slickers, the gunmen and the maniacs on the Freak Show. If she could, she’d kick them out of the Freak Show, but she couldn’t. She threatened to retaliate against David and Bob. With what, she didn’t know. All she really had was her coat, her purse, and her fists. Her coat and her purse didn’t have much of a punch to them if she used either one of them like a whip for self-defense. She didn’t know how hard she could punch either one of them if she was forced to retaliate. But she would try.

She sung about her baby—her six-month old son, Chris. He now had the biggest brown eyes Jacqueline saw on anyone, and he was now growing a small Afro on his head. While she went to work, her family looked after Chris. They wanted a more spacious place in London to raise the baby, but they couldn’t afford anything more expensive than the flat they shared in the Freak Show. Jacqueline warned Bob and David that they could do anything to her. But if they even laid eyes on Chris, she’d really try to hurt them.

Bob heard Jacqueline singing. He taunted her in the elevator, asking, through song, what Jacqueline found so dangerous about David and him. He tried to claim that all three of them were friends and that there was nothing to be afraid of between the three of them. He even started singing Johnny “Guitar” Watson’s “Looking Back” as a way to intimidate her. It didn’t work. Jacqueline kept moving.

While looking up at David, Jacqueline passed by a flat with a metal fence door, fused together in the front like prison bars. A boy, wearing a fedora and a Freddy Krueger mask, held on to the wire door. He had seen all the _A Nightmare on Elm Street_ movies that were available on VHS, even though his babysitter knew he was too young to watch or understand any of the movies. The boy thought Freddy Krueger was this cool monster with scars on his face and blades for hands; he didn’t realize the character was a child murderer. He wore gorilla hands over his own, to simulate Freddy’s blades. Jacqueline was too much in a panic to look for the Freddy Krueger boy. Like most everyone in the Freak Show, she was also terrified by the Freddy Krueger boy, and made all efforts to dodge seeing him if she remembered to do that.

After Jacqueline climbed a few flights of stairs, she heard the elevator grinding to a halt. She looked above to make sure Bob wasn’t getting off the elevator. Jacqueline had an idea of what floor Bob was getting off when the elevator stopped. She put her back against the wall, just in case Bob walked off the elevator as she climbed the stairs. Jacqueline made it up a half flight of stairs before Bob came out of the elevator. She was able to outrun Bob and continue her journey to her flat.

She kept up her threats as she hid in the shadows of the stairwell, trying to remain unseen by Bob and David. She kept singing about her retaliation and her child, as long and loud as possible, to intimidate them.

Until she couldn’t any longer.

Because she beat Bob and David to her flat, and, at least for the night, she was safe with her family and Chris. She locked the door and blocked the door with her body to catch her breath. Jacqueline wasn’t sure if Bob and David would retaliate later, or if they would forget about tonight. Hell, maybe someone would have them arrested for drug possession or attempted assault in the near future. For now, after she had her breath back, she would relax with Chris and put him in his crib for the night.


End file.
